More Montessori Organizing - Fun stuff

Lucy’s main play area is our living room. Her toys and fun stuff used to reside on the bookshelf but as I said before, I did some shifting. This is our armoire.
 
I got it off Craig’s list for $50 and I love it – although I will admit it makes our tv look a little sad. The bottom has lots of storage. The left side holds all our cds, dvds and board games. The right side used to hold blankets but I moved those to the suitcase on top (I’m still putting the top together so don’t judge it yet :-). Now the right side is Lucy’s and looks like this

On the top left is her toy bin with a couple wool balls, her sophie, some farm animals and a rattle or two. The other two items on the top shelf are diy montessori activities (more on those tomorrow) and the bottom shelf holds a set of measuring cups for stacking and unstacking, her Melissa and Doug shape sorter ($5 at a consignment sale, score!) and her Plan pounding ball toy thing. She loves everything in there and plays with it all at least once a day.

As far as letting her play with things, I’m not consistent. Sometimes I leave the door open and let her play with it all. If I do this, sometimes she will take on or two things out and sit with them. Other times she entertains herself by taking it all out and putting it all back in which is fine too. But more often she gets overwhelmed and switches from one to another then back again within 3- seconds. If that happens, I put it all up, wait and see what she wants to take down and help her take it out, then shut the door again, at which point she will sit happily with that one item/activity for quite a while.
Unlike what I said about her library, this is pretty much it for inside toys. The only things she has that aren’t on these shelves are:

• a basket under a side table in our living room that holds her baby doll and 2-3 stuffed animals.
• a small basket of bath/potty toys
• a couple soft toys in the bedroom for playing with in bed when she wakes up pre-7am on the weekend and we don’t want to get up with her yet.

She also has some not toys like

• a “discovery basket” in the kitchen. I put whatever random household objects I stumble upon and think she might like to explore. I think it currently holds a wire whisk, basting brush, a empty butter box, a ribbon and a metal teaspoon. I rotate stuff in as I find it and out when she gets bored with it. In theory this is for when I am working in the kitchen but in reality, she likes to look at it if I am sitting next to her but if I try to accomplish anything, she thinks I am leaving her out of the fun and will stand there, crying and pulling at my pants until I include her the “fun” of dish washing or pb&j making.
• the bottom drawer of the hutch in our dining room is full of tupperware and plastic containers. She loves to empty it out – but surprsingly, she doesn’t like to put it all back :-)

Every once in a while, I panic and feel like I’m depriving her so I go out and buy her something (that is why we have a plan pounder now :-) but 95% of the time, I’m happy with what we have. I like knowing that she is actually using everything she has but more than that, I like knowing I can manage what she has. It is very nice to know that even if she has gotten everything out and scattered it all over the living room, once I put her to bed for the night, I can have it all picked up in less than 3 minutes.
I’m sure she will be getting more stuff for her birthday in a few weeks and that is fine (actually I’m positive she will be because I’m getting her some :-). We’ll rotate what is out so it is always manageable.